Frequency of language and swallowing problems in children with cerebral palsy at a tertiary care hospital Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Objective: To investigate the occurrence of language and swallowing problem in individuals with cerebral palsy. Methods: The cross-sectional survey was conducted at the Riphah International University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, from September 2018 to January 2019 while data was collected from the Armed Forces Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, Rawalpindi, a tertiary care hospital. The sample comprised individuals with cerebral palsy of either gender aged 5-18 years. Language Sample Checklist was used for language problems and the North western Dysphagia Patient Checklist was used for swallowing problems. Data was analysed using SPSS-Version 21. Results: Of the55 subjects,62% were males, 38% were females, 76% were from urban areas and 24% were from rural areas. In terms of concepts, processing, and comprehension, 18(33%) persons were able to attempt the tasks, 45(81%) were unable to attempt morphological tasks, 41(74%) were unable to attempt sentence structure tasks, 40(72%) were unable to attempt literacy and narrative skills tasks, 41(74%)could not fulfil pragmatic tasks and 49(89%) had unintelligible speech. The patient checklist showed that 47(85%) children had normal medical history, 41(75%) had normal behavioural variable, 29(52%) had normal gross motor ability,40(73%) completed oral motor test, and 39(71%) had normal swallow trials. Conclusion: Language problems were more prevalent in children with cerebral palsy compared to swallowing difficulties.

Automated summary

This study investigates the occurrence of language and swallowing problems in individuals with cerebral palsy. The results show that language problems are more prevalent than swallowing difficulties in children with cerebral palsy. The majority of participants had difficulties in various language tasks, particularly in sentence structure and pragmatics.